But Henry’s innocent satisfaction in having at last attained the haven of his desires was not long of duration.  In spite of ill health, his tutors constrained him to enter for a scholarship examination in December, and when the unfortunate fellow pleaded physical inability, they dosed him with “strong medicines” to enable him to face the examiners.  After the ordeal he was so unstrung that he hurried off to London to spend Christmas with his aunt.

The account of his year at college is very pitiful.  His tutors were, according to their lights, very kind; they relieved him as far as possible from financial worries, but they did not have sense enough to restrain him from incessant study.  Even on his rambles he was always at work memorizing Greek plays, mathematical theorems, or what not.  In a memorandum found in his desk his life was thus planned:  “Rise at half-past five.  Devotions and walk till seven.  Chapel and breakfast till eight.  Study and lectures till one.  Four and a half clear reading.  Walk and dinner, and chapel to six.  Six to nine reading.  Nine to ten, devotions.  Bed at ten.”

In the summer of 1806 his examiners ranked him the best man of his year, and in mistaken kindness the college decided to grant him the unusual compliment of keeping him in college through the vacation with a special mathematical tutor, gratis, to work with him, mathematics being considered his weakness.  As his only chance of health lay in complete rest during the holiday, this plan of spending the summer in study was simply a death sentence.  In July, while at work on logarithm tables, he was overtaken by a sudden fainting fit, evidently of an epileptic nature.  The malady gained strength, aided by the weakness of his heart and lungs, and he died on October 19, 1806.

Poor Henry!  Surely no gentler, more innocent soul ever lived.  His letters are a golden treasury of earnest and solemn speculation.  Perhaps once a twelve-month he displays a sad little vein of pleasantry, but not for long.  Probably the light-hearted undergraduates about him found him a very prosy, shabby, and mournful young man, but if one may judge by the outburst of tributary verses published after his death he was universally admired and respected.  Let us close the story by a quotation from a tribute paid him by a lady versifier: 

    If worth, if genius, to the world are dear,
    To Henry’s shade devote no common tear. 
    His worth on no precarious tenure hung,
    From genuine piety his virtues sprung: 
    If pure benevolence, if steady sense,
    Can to the feeling heart delight dispense;
    If all the highest efforts of the mind,
    Exalted, noble, elegant, refined,
    Call for fond sympathy’s heartfelt regret,
    Ye sons of genius, pay the mournful debt!

TRIVIA

    The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane,
    clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.